Europa. Week One.

I was probably twelve when I first heard of “backpacking through Europe.”  Before that, in my mind, going through Europe was luxurious—seeing all the royal places, staying in fabulous hotels that had balconies with breathtaking views of old famous places.  In my mind there would be evening gowns and operas, es cargo, caviar, and tea (pronounced tee-ah).  Compared to all that, backpacking didn’t really sound too fun.  Backpacking is what you do in the mountains or woods when you pee behind trees.

I don’t know that you would call what I’m doing exactly backpacking, as I abandoned my backpack in India and am now toting around a 30kg suitcase (yes, I speak Kilograms and Celsius now).  It’s hardly roughing it with my fresh change of clothes each day (this may not last until Chicago, unfortunately), my laptop, and anything I could possibly need (I was really REALLY prepared for India). The roughest thing I’ve done so far is standing on a train for two hours because there were too many passengers and not enough seats.

My trip is also hardly luxurious. 

But it’s really quite fun.

I met a friend in Prague, Czech Republic, and he showed me around. The old part of the city is absolutely beautiful and has a charm.  We saw the typical tourist sites, and then just continued walking around for hours at a time.  Prague has a lot of hills, so this was an adventure in itself as we stayed at the top of the hill in a very cheap (yay!) dormitory.  Maybe it’s just because it’s my first European city that I have been in, airports not counting, but it’s still my favorite so far.  Then we went to Olomouc, some old city that is small and really beautiful.  After climbing so many steep streets in Prague, we became experts at finding shaded benches, where we could rest.  Olomouc has quite a lot of charm too!  Then, after meeting Lubo’s girlfriend, we went to his hometown and his mom gave us very delicious homemade cake and was the perfect hostess.  Then we went to a fort near his hometown and enjoyed the old ruins before crashing for the night in the city where they live.

Vienna—I guess I was only there for a little over 24 hours, but it was just okay.  Given, the architecture there is gorgeous and the gelato is delicious.  In Prague I could wander around an old part of the city and just be so perfectly content at admiring everything.  I tried just wandering around Vienna and it didn’t have quite the same feel.  I had to go to the touristy areas to really enjoy it. When I finally did the touristy areas, I didn’t have enough time to truly enjoy them, so I’ll go back sometime in the future to truly see the palaces and things.

Then came Budapest. I like the Buda side, I like the Danube River, and I like the Pest side.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see everything that I wanted to see because my feet hurt really bad, my stomach has been weird all week so I’m guessing I need another Cipro, and I had a throbbing headache because my body craved real water.  Not water from a bottle that says “still” and then has tinier bubbles in it compared to the non “still” water.  I just want a good glass of uncarbonated, pure, water—cold or not, I don’t much care. 

 I did get to go to the Holocaust Museum, which focused equally as much on the gypsies and Jews living in Hungary then.  Seeing the images there made me realize just how quickly humans can turn on one another.  They also made me a little ashamed to internally groan about my pounding headache and blistering feet. I know things go on in Africa and Asia that are equally as wrong, but maybe it seems a little more real to me now that this was recently, in Europe, in a VERY civilized and educated country.  But then I remember my Afghan friends showing me pictures of the Afghan queens from 60 years back dressed in beautiful, low-cut ballgowns.  I guess any civilization/government can go south pretty quickly.

I also went to the “House of Terror” which was twice the building for torture under two regimes.  Even after reading all the plaques at the museums, I’m not sure which regimes—but they were Communist and the like.  The museum was okay, but there weren’t too many English captions by the items, so it would’ve been nice to understand Hungarian.  Some visitors were really moved, but I just couldn’t understand what was going on or important about a lot of it!  The most interesting part was the torture rooms and prison cells.  One was literally as much room as the seat I am sitting in on the train right now.  A British girl said it reminded her of “the chokie” from Matilda, if you have seen that movie.  It was strange to me because these were the actual rooms—not just replicas.  Of course there are lots of other beautiful places in Budapest, but these two were the most intriguing to me.

While not feeling so well, I decided I needed to not sightsee for a day, so I planned today’s trip to a small town on Lake Balaton.  It’s this gorgeous—and I do mean gorgeous—huge lake in the middle of Hungary.  The train station didn’t have lockers in the town I randomly chose to stay at (surprise, surprise), and no one really spoke English.  But I found a place to keep watch over my stuff while I spent the day at the lake.  It’s quite shallow, but is surrounded by green hills and maybe mountains.  The water is clear, and sailboats are everywhere, and the only topless girl I saw was about 6 years old, so that was nice, too J  I guess I chose the right small town to get a sunburn in! 

I’m currently headed to Zagreb…I might even be in Croatia right now, I’m not so sure.  I don’t really know much—or anything--of what there is to do in Zagreb, but I am sure it will be a quite wonderful stop before I go to Salzburg. 

It’s been a week since I left India, and I’m just finally starting to get used to the quiet.  Even in the noisy areas, filled with tourists and buses and subways, it seems SO quiet.  There is no fruit or veggie vendor yelling at my window at 7 am, people only use their horns when NECESSARY--believe it or not!, and a crowded subway allows everyone about a square foot of personal space.  India is really loud, I’m noticing after being here J  People use crosswalks—I’m having a hard time getting used to that one.  I haven’t seen a cow in a long time or heard stray cats fighting outside my window OR seen a rat scurry across my floor (Thank goodness!)  Everything just seems absolutely peaceful in comparison. 

People also seem terribly polite.  Not so much in the smile-to-say-hello way that Americans do, but in the get-up-to-let-the-elderly-woman-sit-on-the-subway or help-the-poor-American-get-her-25kg-bag-up-the-meter-high-steps-on-the-train kind of ways.  In India, you watch out for your own people, but you don’t so much consider everyone else in these ways. 

Either way, I don’t much miss my India yet, but I don’t have the “finally-home” feeling at all in Europe like I did when I first got to Chennai.  But it’s beautiful and I am LOVING my fabulous vacation.

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